Eating Alone in Sicily

When I’m on tour, most meals are pre-ordered at restaurants chosen by the tour provider.  They are usually delicious and showcase local specialties, but don’t allow for the freedom to choose what to eat.  So, when I am on my own, I try to eat less at each meal and select options more in keeping with my preferences.  At the same time, I want to eat like a local when possible.  The hotel staff in Catania and Taormina have accommodated my desire to eat at traditional Sicilian restaurants, sending me to small family-owned places where the only English I have heard has been me trying to communicate with the waiters.  And I haven't seen a "trip advisor" sign in the windows of any of these places.

My first night in Catania, Antonio sent me to Taverna del Grande Albero, a small (eight tables) place tucked into a corner between multi-story buildings.  On my own, I never would have given it a second glance, but Antonio had assured me that it was his absolute favorite place to eat in the neighborhood.  

I asked for Sicilian specialties and was guided to pasta alla Norma.  I was served a large round construction topped with a sprinkling of grated hard ricotta cheese and a basil leaf.  I cut into it to discover that the outer “leaves” were thin slices of eggplant folded around a homemade tube pasta (rigatoni? ziti? penne?) in a tomato sauce.  It was delicious.  

"Norma" was the most popular opera written by the Italian (from Catania) Vincenzo Bellini.  The dish is named for that opera, and the shape represents Mount Etna, the volcanic mountain between Catania and Taormina, covered with snow.

The next night, Antonio sent me to a “barbeque” restaurant specializing in seafood.  I had a traditional eggplant salad, caponata, followed by grilled sea bass.  It was piping hot and reminiscent of Scott’s summer catches of rainbow trout.  I may have made a major faux pas in eating it, however.  I asked for salt, which the waiter graciously brought, but the man at the next table mouthed “salt?” to his companion like “can you believe that?!”  At another restaurant I noted that bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar are provided along with a pepper mill, but no salt shaker.  I know that in my cooking classes, salt is generously added when cooking, but evidently it is not added at the table.

In a similar tale of misunderstandings, I went into a panini shop for a quick lunch to go.  I knew how to ask for cheese (il formaggio) but blanked on the word for tomato.  The panini-maker said, “tomato? Si.”  After she had grilled my sandwich, she applied a generous squirt of ketchup to it.  Ah, “tomato” means ketchup.  If you actually want a tomato, you must ask for “pomodoro.”  Ketchup on my grilled cheese sandwich was different.  Not terrible, but not something I will likely repeat.

I found a vegetarian, organic, local food restaurant through my maps.me app.*  No one seemed to speak English and so I followed what others were doing, pointing to options from a covered buffet of offerings.  Turns out that it was a fixed-price buffet.  Twelve euros for as much food as you wanted to pile on a plate.  I just tried a restrained sample of four items:  a rice ball, sauteed cabbage and carrots, a potato quiche, and a chickpea cake.  It all tasted great.

Last night in Taormina, another Antonio sent me to the family-owned Ristorante Malvasia.  I tried the spaghetti aglio e olio (spaghetti with garlic and olive oil AND a generous sprinkle of crushed hot red pepper flakes).  It was hot in both meanings—the first bite burned my mouth and the crushed red pepper flakes were nearly overpowering.  Good thing I had ample servings of bread, wine, and water to go with it.

After walking around looking for someplace for lunch today, I returned to Malvasia.  And what a treat that was!  Clearly this is a regular place for some locals.  “Mama” walked around and spoke to everyone.  She even gave me a “buon appetito” in passing.  People talked across the restaurant to one another.  Mama, son, and son’s wife sat down to lunch themselves around 2:00 and continued the cross-restaurant conversations.  My spaghetti with tomato sauce may have been a plain offering, but when both the pasta and the tomato sauce are homemade and flavorful, who needs anything else.   

I had read that bread is served, not as an appetizer to dip in olive oil and balsamic vinegar (an American Italian invention), but as a tool to help sop up sauces and to push last morsels of food onto the fork.  As I watched, the restaurant owner thoroughly cleaned his plate with his last crust of bread (homemade, of course).  I followed suit, making sure I got every drop of that delicious tomato sauce into my mouth.

Buon appetito, indeed!

*By the way, if you haven’t yet discovered maps.me, I recommend that you look for the app.  It is my favorite tool for traveling in unfamiliar locations.  You need to download the maps you want while you have wifi or cell service, but then you don’t need either to find a route, a restaurant, get directions back to your hotel, etc.  It is a marvelous offline tool, tracking your movements using satellite feeds, and is available in both Apple and Android versions.